December 31, 2013

"What's the best way aka easiest/most cost-efficient to develop new business?"

Content-providers ask me that all the time. Increasingly that query is coming from underemployed journalists who figure they could do a whole lot better in executive communications, that is ghostwriting and speechwriting.

My answer is: Direct mail and brilliant use of search engine optimization (SEO) for your blogging, which is attached to your tweets and Facebook wall.

That said, I add: But you must do everything, use all marketing methods available. Among them is replying to help-wanted on eLance, Craigslist, Mediabistro and JournalismJobs. Then the question immediately rises: What about eLance's service fee? Unlike the other platforms on which assignments and full-time jobs are posted, eLance charges a service fee of almost 9%.

First of all, that service fee is, of course, tax deductible. Just like our entire smartphone bill is for independent contractors like ourselves.

Secondly, the competition is less stiff on eLance. That's because of the service fee. Answer a help-wanted on Craigslist for ghostwriting a non-fiction book and your cover letter, resume and samples are among the 100 to 200 packets of material arriving at the e-box of those placing the ad. Frequently there will be 15 replies to such an ad on eLance. That means you invest less time applying and more time actually being interviewed on SKYPE or through email for a fit. Within an hour of answering eLance ads I had been told I had made the next cut.

Third, there are fewer cons and crazies. More than three years ago, nine of us writers who answered a Craigslist ad got taken in a scam by a con man in Canada.

Long story short, his MO was for the mark to send money to him via PayPal. Fortunately, we had only lost the time we had put into doing the assignments on fathers and child custody battles. He made the mistake of listing us and our contact information on one of the communications vehicles. One wary writer warned us about his suspicions, then did some sleuthing. None of us ponied up money. Recently eLance yanked an ad that requested writing of all the admission materials for applying to law school because it violated the integrity of the academic process.

Fourth, eLance is our collection agency. Also, it provides a form of arbitration. Anyone who had to beg for payment during the darkest days of the recession knows the value of all that.

eLance is one way to get assignments and long-term jobs. Never rely, though, on just one or two or even three. Keep testing the waters about which has the best return on your time (ROT).

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch was at Oxford when game theory was the rage. Look where he is now. And the smart money is betting that he will hold on to his power, despite being already 82. Since he recently divorced, he is also one of the most eligible bachelors in Manhattan.

Noble Prize winner John Nash brought the concept of game theory mainstream. Essentially, when we leverage game theory we plan our moves based on what we calculate other players will do. No, never, do we formulate strategy in isolation. When applying for a job or pitching for new business we struggle to figure out how the competition will present itself.

So, given the track record for game theory, the most damning thing folks can say about you (and it will be behind your back) is that you "played it wrong." Frequently that is what we say to ourselves (in private) when we experience a setback or even lackluster results. Since there will always be those with more money, influence and power than we have, the one metric we can take refuge in is how well we played our little game. That's exactly why we feel so foolish when we fail. We, you got it, played it wrong.

Most of us take great comfort and joy in observing the bad moves our competitors and enemies make. That's our private SuperBowl.

Blizzard. The media don't even need that term to get attention for the storm which might hit here in the northeast Thursday. Enough would even have been the generic term "weather." Here is one bit of coverage of what might or might happen late this week.

We have to wonder if the obsession with news about the weather - past, present, future - is part of mankind's hard-wiring or a phenomenon commercially created by media outlets? Sure, back when we were farmers we better be concerned with predictions about weather. However, a growing number of us are telecommuters who don't even have to step out of our home offices to earn our living. No, I don't have to run up and stock up on bread and milk in case of the blizzard. My apartment complex has plenty of vending machines.

My happiest memories are of those times when my circle of friends (now we call that "networks") and I were oblivious to the weather. For instance, in graduate school in frozen Michigan, we never changed our mood or plans, even in blizzards. We went on teaching Freshman Composition and walking miles (few had cars or even bicycles) to have fun at parties. As a young adult trying to put together a writing career in equally frozen western Pennsylvania I covered whatever whenever. When blogging was new I made it to the court house in Providence, Rhode Island for the lead paint public nuisance four-month trial, whenever.

Does a weather mindset set in when we are unable to create our own sense of excitement about our lives? At that time we are vulnerable to manipulation by the media, aren't we? Then the Weather Channel becomes hot stuff.

December 30, 2013

In "The Trip to Echo Spring," Olivia Laing focuses on six giants in literature who were also drunks. They range from Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Here you can find out more about it on Amazon.com.

Obviously, Laing has struck a nerve. The book is in the 400 ranking on Amazon and was reviewed yesterday on the first page of THE NEW YORK TIMES "Book Review" by Lawrence Osborne. Here you can read that.

Why so much interest? Well, the book looks at the seeming correlation of creativity and alcoholism. And that can be looked at from all sorts of angles. For example, in order to sustain excessive drinking, you gotta be plenty creative. That's exactly why speaker meetings in 12-step programs are so entertainity.

But, what might be more compelling is that Laing captures a time when writers could get away with boozing. Sure, there were periods in Fitzgerald's career when he couldn't get work or do work because of his drinking. But then he bounced back. That's not so easy now with a glut of writers, what is in demand changing so fast and greater understanding by employers and clients how difficult it is to put up with a drunk. The late Dominick Dunne who put together a second career as a legal writer after he sobered up is the exception, not the rule.

No longer will talent per se or even a track record for producing outstanding work hold the boozing writer afloat. And with the market continuing to mutate, comebacks are harder to come by. For that reason, sponsors in 12-step programs warn newbies who are writers that they better "get the program."

Incidentally, the same holds for other professionals such as Wall Street types who live by their wits (that is, leverage creativity). Once they crash through boozing, it's unlikely they can make it back. And that's for a ton of reasons. In "Wolf of Wall Street," Jordan is barred from working in the securities industry.

Not being a boozer, of course, doesn't guarantee success in writing. Nor in any other line of work. Making it big has become a lot more complex than in the era of the Great Boozers.

December 29, 2013

In 2002, a professor in Pittsburgh - Richard Florida - rose to fame. His book "The Rise of the Creative Class" posited that economic development blossoms when those "creative" types move in. A rising tide lifts all boats. Not so, it's been found. Actually when they arrive inequality increases.

In THE NEW REPUBLIC, Alec MacGillis describes the descrediting of both the theory and practice of the creative-class economic development. He points out that in the recent mayor's race in New York, Bill de Blasio won by pushing back on creative-class assumptions. Here you can read the article in TNR.

This crumbling of the creative-class meme has serious implications for other politicos. For example, where I grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, the new mayor Steve Fulop has leveraged the meme of the creative class. Here is coverage of that by the influential BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK. As momentum grows against attracting the creative class to urban areas, politicos like Fulop could lose credibility.

The broader lesson here is to be cautious before passionately embracing Idea Entrepreneurs. The ideas might have merit. But they may have unexpected consequences upon implementation. They might even morph into one of Nassim Taleb's Black Swans. Wise thought leaders, especially politicos, should carve out their unique vision for progress. Copying and pasting from what has made others a brandname could so easily make them a joke.

December 28, 2013

Do we really want to view an inspiring film about good human beings? Even before the invention of film John Milton embedded in "Paradise Lost" that evil was a more compelling subject than good. The Devil hogged all the attention.

So, what has dominated film buzz this holiday season is talk about the characters and scams in "American Hustle" and "Wolf of Wall Street."

What I got out of those two extraordinary films is that I gotta live by my wits. The hell with what we might have learned in pricey degree programs and in our first few jobs. Instead we have to put together a game that will earn us a good living, be fun, and not involve too much heavy lifting. It must, of course, be legal. Few of us ordinary kind could make it through prison time.

Seniors in college might have been so affected by the films that they will toss plans to go on for another degree and just use their wits to make a buck. It that doesn't work out, the college degree could be a fall-back position. But they shouldn't count on it.

Sure, prospective employers and organizations hiring us for contract assignments still request samples.

But, you might have noticed that more and more often they don't. Instead they go straight to search engines or ask the URLs for our blogs. Yes, our blogs have transmuted into our online portfolios. And we can multiple their impact exponentially by linking the content of each post to a Tweet.

In addition, when companies and individuals are hunting for a writer, they frequently go straight to the web. They key in terms like "ghostwriter - New Haven, Connecticut" or "Executive Communications - Corporate." Because they do that, two of my recent assignments came my way, without my having to respond to a help-wanted. Closing the deal was easier. That's because they already liked what they had found on search engines about my approach and styles of writing.

So, yes, as New Year's Eve approaches make a resolution to start a blog or to put more creativity into the blog you already have. The payoff is continuous. This is a low-cost way to enhance our professional opportunities.

Around the world, at least in developed economies, "normal" people have discovered what drunks always knew: Drinking to excess is fun, eliminates stress for a bit, and is something to look forward to doing.

What they don't know - and also drunks are in denial about - is that binge drinking can get out of hand. Also one incident of it can land you in the hospital or on the road impaired. Here is that coverage in THE ECONOMIST.

In response, policy makers are searching for ways to prevent binge drinking. An experiment in Scotland is to raise the price of a unit of alcohol. That, it's hoped, will make it unaffordable to youth.

But, as we have found out with tobacco, sin taxes haven't deterred a large number of people who continue to smoke, despite the cost. Instead of playing with prices, policy makers might look at the values of the society which "drive people to drink." Twelve-step programs end problem drinking through bringing about internal paradigm shifts in how the boozer sees the world. Stopping hazardous drinking is an inside job.

December 27, 2013

The bottom-line lesson is "Wolf of Wall Street" is to learn how to sell. Do that and you can always reinvent yourself, just as Jordan did in federal prison and then again, after release, as an international sales trainer. The film ends with his cluing in the unwashed about the fundmentals of selling. Jordan is a survivor.

Not that there is just one style of selling. Jordan's high-pressure tactics were very effective back then, before a lot of ugly things happened in the economy. In some target markets they might still work. Now and then I receive requests from prospects to knock out that kind of hard-boiled copy. I always say no. Not my style. I can't invest my soul in it.

More my style, at least after a lot of trial and error as the economy started recovering, is leveraging expertise. Increasingly those in professional services know they need a book as a price of entry. Usually they don't know what they don't know about doing a book. I bite the bullet and get in there and inform them about the musts. That's one style.

Another style of selling is listening a lot. That gives you the opportunity to uncover what the prospect really wants or needs. It may be permission to buy a designer purse or the Audi. If you've been trained to listen, you pick that up. You give permission. You have the sale.

The best way of learning how to sell is to observe successful salespeople. They might be in Congress, pitching a proposal or the clerk in PetSmart leading you through the door toward the high end of dog winter coats.

The next step is to go out there and try out the range of styles. You will know immediately which is the best fit for you. You will sell sell sell.

So, it's no surprise that members of 12-step programs saw in the film "Saving Mr. Banks" a morality tale about the destructiveness of alcoholism. The father goes from being a charmer to a menace in the workplace and destructive force in the lives of his wife and children. The wife attempts suicide. The first-born daughter is an emotional mess, until Walt Disney liberates her from her self shut-down.

However, there's much more to see than that in "Saving Mr. Banks." For example, it's an accurate depiction of how a creative team, whose members trust their instincts and each other, can produce amazing content. Also, there are the selling skills of Disney. He knows how to close a deal, even amidst obstacles. Another reason for ponying up the price of admission is to bear witness to the potential power (mirror neurons) one human being can have on another. The Disney driver and Mrs. Travis establish a connection. That breaks them open to new ways to frame their individual emotional ordeals. And then begin healing.